Before Kevin Bacon was walking around in annoying adverts talking about himself and the 4G network, he was in a film called Footloose. It focuses on a teenager who is sent to live in the small town of Bomont, West Virginia, where rock music and dancing are banned. It's debatable whether or not the film is any good but the basic premise – that the simple act of dancing could be banned – seemed like something that, well, could only happen in the movies. However, in Japan and especially the country's third largest city, Osaka, that is exactly what is happening.

The nightclubs in the city's Amemura area, known as "little America" on account of its trendy vintage shops that stock large amounts of US clothing, started being targeted by the authorities recently. Under laws known as Fueiho, which govern "adult entertainment" (and date back to the 1940s), any establishment which allows its customers to dance must obtain a licence. For years the authorities turned a blind eye, but three years ago they began raiding establishments which did not have the licences.

These licences come with a few requirements: the club must close by either midnight or 1am (in other words, just as things are getting going) and have 66 sq m of unobstructed floor space in the main room. Anyone who has been to Japan knows that the vast majority of bars and clubs simply don't have that amount of room for a dancefloor because space is at such a premium, especially in the country's big cities.

On a recent trip to Osaka I spoke to the owner of Noon nightclub, Masatoshi Kanemitsu, in Amemura. Last April he and seven members of staff were arrested by police and held for 22 days because 11 people were dancing in his club. His bank accounts were investigated and police looked for links between himself and Yakuza (Japanese gangsters), which simply didn't exist. Similar raids have taken place in Amemura since 2010 and in the aftermath many establishments have been forced to close. Noon just about manages to carry on but, like in many of Osaka's nightclubs, now patrons know that dancing is strictly prohibited.

The reason for the crackdown centres on complaints from local residents of noise, concerns around antisocial behaviour associated with the clubs, and wider concerns over clubbing culture which have made the headlines after high-profile celebrity ravers were caught in possession of drugs.

The same moral panic that led to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Actin the UK started to envelope Japan in 2010. But instead of legislation that took clubbing from the unregulated, illegal rave scene and helped plonk it into the mainstream, the Japanese authorities seem intent on using the outmoded Fueiho regulations to kill off bars and clubs where dance music is played altogether.

Yet the moral panic that has overcome the authorities seems to only stretch so far. They have failed to see the hypocrisy in effectively banning the act of dancing in Osaka's nightclubs – partly because of issues of taste – while still allowing Amemura's lap dancing clubs to operate a few hundred metres down the road. It's a situation that has driven Kanemitsu to form the protest group Let's Dance, and take legal action of his own against the authorities.

In Osaka the clampdown is more than a simple issue of gentrification, and it affects more than just the livelihoods of DJs, musicians and club owners. The bars and clubs act as a hub for creativity, not only for dance music, but for those interested in fashion, design and art too. It's impossible to imagine areas like Shoreditch or Dalston in London or Manchester's Northern Quarter without the bars and clubs that help give the areas their identity, but because they don't fit in with the Osaka authority's idea of what Amemura should be, they are being squeezed out.

In Osaka the fightback has already started. For some it's a case of saving the music and clubs that they love, but for others it's just a case of wanting to go out and dance. In 2013 that simple act shouldn't be something rebellious, but without defying draconian laws people will lose the right to dance altogether and, in these austere times, that's about as welcome as another Kevin Bacon advert.